Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

Encountering Jesus in the past year has built this new way for me, this new path to knowing Him better and living in His strength and abundant grace and letting the Spirit work through me instead of striving.

But this new way actually is coming back to old things. We come back to the simple, common graces of what it means to walk with Jesus.

I...

From Nothing to Prove by Jeannie Allen on YouVersion

I am not enough. It is a terrifying phrase that goes through our heads on quite a regular basis about a plethora of things. Let me tell you a few of the stories I have heard just from my close circle of friends.

Bekah leads boot camps. As she leads neighbors and friends through workouts, she also has seen them through ca...

From Nothing to Prove by Jennie Allen on YouVersion

Water. No human can survive three days without it. No other resource is more essential to sustain life. None.

Here is the thing. The enemy promises water, but every time we go to his wells, they are empty. He gives us a sip of water, enough that we keep believing him. We have believed the lie that our cravings will be sat...

From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion

And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. —Matthew 24:10

Let’s examine this statement. If we look closely, we can see a progression. An offense leads to betrayal, and betrayal leads to hatred. Offended people build walls for protection. Our focus becomes self-preserv...

From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion

Where are you getting your worldview from?

When we filter everything through past hurts, rejections, and experiences, we find it impossible to believe God. We cannot believe He means what He says. We doubt His goodness and faithfulness since we judge Him by the standards set by man in our lives. But God is not a man! He cann...

From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion

Offense is taken down when we see the world clearly. Jesus said our ability to see correctly is another key to freedom from deception. When we are offended, we often see ourselves as victims and blame those who have hurt us. We justify our bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, envy, and resentment as they surface. Sometimes we even resent those who remind us...

Pride keeps you from dealing with truth. It distorts your vision. You never change when you think everything is fine.

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to thei...

The possibilities for offense are as endless as the list of relationships, no matter how complex or simple.

From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion

As I travel across the United States ministering, I have observed one of the enemy’s most deadly and deceptive traps. It imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, and widens our existing breaches. It is the trap of offense.

From Kingdom Heroes by Tony Evans on YouVersion

“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” (Hebrews 11:23)

Not afraid. Those two words sum up how Moses grew to express such greatness. The parents who gave him life were “...

“And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.” (Hebrews 11:11)

Our next exhibit in the Hall of Heroes illustrates this truth in a dramatic fashion. This hero’s name is Sarah. She started life as Sarai, and she married Abraham, who, again, began life ...

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8)

Your life of faith as a kingdom hero will also involve how you choose to live. We read in Hebrews 11:9 that “by faith [Abraham] lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in...

“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.” (Hebrews 11:7)

Many of us fail to live our lives as kingdom heroes simply because our faith has dried up. We go through the motions only to discover tha...

From Kingdom Heroes by Tony Evans on YouVersion

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Before we look closely at the lives who modeled faith as told in Hebrews 11, I want to give you a simple definition of faith:

Faith is acting like God is telling the truth. It&rsq...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion

If there’s anything my life has taught me, it’s this: setbacks are not the end of your story. They often feel final, painful, or discouraging, but God has a way of turning what looks like defeat into the very soil where new beginnings grow. Some of the greatest breakthroughs in my life came right after seasons I thought w...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion

If there’s one thing we all have in common, it’s this: we will encounter difficult people. They show up at work, in families, in friendships, and sometimes even in church. Early in my life, I thought the solution was to avoid them, fix them, or outmaneuver them. But over the years, God’s taught me that dealing with ...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion

For a long time, I thought I could control far more than I actually could. Maybe you’ve been there too, believing that if you plan well enough, work hard enough, or pray long enough, everything will fall into place exactly the way you want it to. But life has a way of reminding us that we’re not as in control as we think.

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